The present invention relates to musical toys and in particular to a musical vehicle that runs on a track representing the standard musical staff on which note tiles may be placed to be played by the vehicle.
Toy trains that play music when they run are well known in the art. Spring or battery powered trains including a music box or the like play a tune as they move across a track or a floor. Different tunes may be played by replacing a portion of the music box such as the disk or drum holding pins which engage a sound producing mechanism. Such trains provide limited play value insofar as the songs are either fixed or selected from a fairly narrow repertoire.
In order to increase the toy play value, an alternative design may be adopted which allows the child to compose his or her own music that the train may play as it moves along. U.S. Pat. No. 3,590,679, for example, describes one such train in which the ties of a railroad type track are xylophone bars which may be struck by the train as it travels along the track. The ties are replaceable so that by proper selection and sequencing of the ties, an arbitrary melody may be played. Nevertheless, the number of tunes that may be played with this device is severely limited for practical implementations by the number of ties that can be provided. For example for a simple eight note melody, sixty-four different tone bars would be required to allow complete compositional flexibility even constrained to a single octave. Typically, a child will find that one or more notes required for the melody has been exhausted.
Also, the xylophone-type train, while allowing greater creative input by the child, uses compositional metaphor (ties on a track) that is foreign to conventional musical notation, thus failing to take advantage of a valuable educational opportunity for early musical training.
A more coherent version of the musical metaphor is provided in U.S. Pat. No. 6,066,025 wherein the relationship of the musical staff and the notes on the track are referenced. Still, the visual analog of the musical staff therein remains vague, and the beats per note are not readily apparent to the user in the layout of the design. The devise as described does not account for the inclusion of sharp and flat notes or a means to play notes in a higher or lower octave.
Additionally, in the aforementioned U.S. Pat. No. 6,066,025 the attachment means of the note tiles does not provide a secure snap fit means. Thus, the smallest note tile must be sufficiently large to provide reliable stability to the system when engaging the levers on the vehicle so as to remain upright. This yields a track that is restrictively long for a child's toy. Particularly when a single line of musical track without curved connecting tracks is preferred to reduce cost and/or space requirements.
What is needed is a toy that provides the groundwork for early exposure to musical composition by providing a clear visual representation of the musical staff and having features that allow for playing a wider variety of note types and scales in a system that is compact in size with a secure connection method that is familiar to children.